


Under Nails

by FullMetamorphosis



Series: The Galaxy Shattering Around Us [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Blood, Cutting, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Side Bounty Hunter - Freeform, Mental Illness, Mostly hurt, Multi, Murder, Other, PTSD, Referenced Polyamory, Referenced Slavery, References to Sex, Scarring, Self-Harm, an example of what not to do, angsty, bounty hunter chapter three, psychological damage, some day i will write a proper romance fic for tori and alex, this is entirely a vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 23:38:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11885277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullMetamorphosis/pseuds/FullMetamorphosis
Summary: The pain is centering. It erases the ache behind their eyes. Makes the world go silent just like their head against the wall did, taking away the awful memories they’d been scarred with.





	Under Nails

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Narcissus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11884155) by [klismaphilia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klismaphilia/pseuds/klismaphilia). 



> This work was inspired by klismaphilia's "Narcissus". Please check out his work, it's really fantastic and he's an amazing writer.
> 
> This is entirely a vent fic resulting from two mental breakdowns in less than 24 hours, and the pain/fantasies that come with. Please note that I am fine and I am getting the help I need (just need to take my damn meds).
> 
> Alexei is, at their core, an extremely strong character in that they usually have nerves of steel. But that doesn't make them immune from illness and this was how I thought of them as I played through Chapter Three of the bounty hunter story.
> 
> Includes some headcanons about Torian and the Mandos too, because I'm up here for positivity Mandos.
> 
> (I don't recommend any of the "treatments" or self-harm Alexei does to themselves in this fic. Please seek actual medical help, because I'm far from a doctor. This was just my way to vent my own angst.)
> 
> ((Alexei goes by they/them but is biologically female.))

The world went quiet for them when they did it. Blissfully quiet; all the noises in the background muddled into nothing but a hum. Any voices that lingered around just disappeared, though Alexei was never sure if that was because anybody that found them were shocked into silence, or because there was never anybody there to begin with.

 

At least they usually stop before somebody finds them in the act, or so they hope. Slamming their head against the walls of their apartment wasn’t the most subtle of acts, but it’s a big place, and the steel walls don’t dent. Usually somebody would find them afterwords, lying on the floor sobbing or clutching their head to their knees. Nobody got to see them in the middle of their torment, when all they want is the world to go silent, for the racing thoughts that’d pervaded them to end.

 

Alexei couldn’t talk about Corellia.

 

They couldn’t tell anybody about any of the trauma the previous five months had left on them. It was hard to explain. Finding the dead bodies of their friends on Nar Shaddaa when they were supposed to be creating a party for  _ them _ , to celebrate the Champion of the Great Hunt, but were they? No. Because that damn Jedi and those SIS agents had to storm in and kill them all,  _ everyone _ , even Bloodworthy and Jewl’a. It’d been awful enough, and they’d broken down there and then when the blood was still fresh under their nails, but then to return to their ship and see the Chancellor on their holoterminal, to hear their name denounced-

 

It was a bounce off the wall for each of their fallen champions. Tearing fingertips against their arms and in their hair, in their scalp.

 

And then it was servitude again.  _ Again _ , though without the constant humiliation they’d gone through on Hutta, no rags to cover their body or that boy who’d tried to push them against the wall and have his way with them. No, this time it was Darth Tormen - and he earned three slams himself. His narrow eyes, cruel tone, the single time he’d hoisted them in the air and cut off their breath. Revealing to anybody that a simple bounty hunter had the Force, could push back without the training of Korriban, was a fear that shook them so hard that was a whole other session of  _ hurt hurt hurt _ before anything else could be said.

 

Belsavis, their potential prison. Voss, a private warzone. Corellia, a series of graves.

 

_ He _ was the only one who could help.

 

He didn’t care that they’d seen love more than once, was married to a Jedi and still laid in his arms in open honesty. No; somehow Mandalorians didn’t chastise polyamory, even if Alexei still sometimes did. But Torian sees them for how they are. Holds them in their bed until they sleep. Encourages them to eat even if their mind protests the experience. Even on shuttles between missions, he’d pull them to his body and lie them down in his lap, tell them to get some sleep. Alexei isn’t sure they would’ve gotten through it without them. No, they’d have sooner tore out their hair, sooner would’ve picked up a vibroblade and cut out their heart from the sheer angst of the whole experience. Thankfully, he seemed to sense that too. Their spars were constant, brutal, necessary,  _ utterly necessary _ , so primal that its natural conclusion was for them to fuck, to feel his body splitting them apart on the floor of the cargo bay, away from listening ears.

 

He kept their head above water. But then he got kidnapped, and Alexei knows that the only reason they kept a steady head was because  _ Torian can take care of himself _ , even as they shoving their foot into the throat of a would-be assassin and filling his gut full of their blaster beams. They’d spilled blood,  _ hell _ had they spilled blood. Mako didn’t question their brutality when she saw, and neither did Torian. Just smiled at them with a “That’s my Alexei”, and they’d kissed him out of the blue.

 

It was a damned good thing they’d figured themselves out by the time they left Voss. Because Corellia was a beast they couldn’t fight alone.

 

Corellia should’ve been a bounty hunter’s best friend. Didn’t feel like that when they were working there. Their employer was a madman, a sadist, and to willingly throw themselves into circles of guards and under the deep sewers of the city to get what they wanted felt like only the minimum to get closer to their true goal.  _ Jun Seros _ . When they finally found him, they fought with a fury. His blood spilled over their arms and masked the bruises. He’d made a pretty sight, lying on the floor with a hole in his head and in a puddle of red.

 

_ Jun. Seros. Jun. Seros _ \--

 

Jun Seros should’ve overshadowed the Chancellor, if not for his words. If not for his apology. If not for the records he’d made public, for the attempt to save their reputation.

 

“I don’t want my  _ pfaasking _ reputation,” they’d spat at him, “I want the goddamn  _ honour _ that this damn world seems intent on stripping from me since my birth!”

 

Torian had to carry them off the  _ Founder _ , after they killed the Chancellor. And he’d had to carry them off the  _ Tyrant _ too, after they’d killed Tormen.

 

That should’ve been the end of it.

 

But Kaas City had changed. It was darker now, edges sharper, shadows holding more than their eyes could really see, even with the adaptor that had been implanted above their left eye years ago. The streets weren’t the same. Their own apartment seemed wider, vast, empty. Their world had stopped for five months when they were sent away on murderous task. But Kaas City, Kaas City hadn’t stopped for them.

 

It was a relief to finally comm their wife, to finally see her face.

 

It was a horror for an ex lover to grind away their last remnants of honor, to point at the way they’d hung off Torian with their last remnants of strength and told them, in horror and shame, that they were off  _ cradle-robbing _ while he’d been left to wonder if they’d died.

 

Alexei’s mentality must’ve snapped in that moment. The way the tears finally washed over them in full one last time, how they fell to the ground and bleated out useless words, finally crushed not by the weight of their status as the Republic’s Most Wanted, and not by the shame of working for a Darth, but by the trust they thought they could never lose.

 

Red looks so pretty when it’s painted up and down their arms.

 

They’d thought about it so often, dreamed of it following another nightmare of Corellia and Belsavis and Nar Shaddaa. They thought of the vibroknife hidden under their pillow in case of emergencies, the one Mako thought she’d taken from them but hadn’t accounted for them stealing back. It wouldn’t take long, wouldn’t hurt, and  _ oh _ , Torian gets up without them one morning, and they can’t help themselves, not when they’re cold and their hands ache and there isn’t nearly enough rough blood between their legs from their last coupling anyway.

 

The pain is centering. It erases the ache behind their eyes. Makes the world go silent just like their head against the wall did, taking away the awful memories they’d been scarred with. Not just the run for their life, not just the servitude for a Sith, but  _ before _ , their slavery on Hutta with their sister and the assault that revealed to them the Force they held within their veins. And then their return years later, trained not as a Sith but as a Hunter, only to find their sister in their worst potential fate. Sick, mad, waiting for nothing but a mercy kill.

 

Killed was she - and the rest of the damn house that had held them. The corruption that’d settled in their face and their eyes didn’t fade for months. The slick feeling of blood had never faded since that massacre. And yet they feel no regret.

 

Sitting up amongst white sheets, Alexei tilts their head to one side and hums, fingers delicately playing along the cuts run perpendicular up and down their forearm. It’s a bloody mess, drips to the blankets with the gore, but the world is quiet again, at least for now. The anger and the fear isn’t there. It’s all bled out, too, like the red from under their skin. Even if their head hurts - it’s a relief.

 

When Torian finds them, it all falls apart. And they’re glad he doesn’t say much. He helps them out of bed. He walks them to the bathroom, to sit on the edge of the edge of the tub. It’s when he kneels before them and begins to clean the cuts on one arm that they finally snap, sobbing at his soft touch and doubling over at the pain in their gut, the guilt that begins to eat at them.

 

“Mandalore has never condemned the battles we fight inside, Alexei. They leave as many wounds as a full-on war does.”

 

Torian kisses each of their bandaged wrists, and looks up to them with sad eyes.

 

“This isn’t a battle you have to fight alone.”

 

Enslaved as a youth, lost early in their career to bloodlust and rage, tormented by resistance when they thought they had  _ ever _ found happiness. Outcasted the moment they thought they had a home.

 

But he must know, too. The boy who’d been divorced from his father at such a young age. An  _ aruetii _ among his own people, mocked by his own peers, drawn to their side simply because they’d stood against his father when it mattered. Except now, after all of that, he still occupies their bed, still sleeps at night, still  _ comforts _ them-

 

“I carved these ritual scars myself, you know,” he finally tells them, holding their hands gently in his. “I needed to remember who I was, what I was. They’ve healed - and so will you,  _ cyar’ika _ .”

 

“We can’t know that,” they finally croak out. He shakes his head, and puts his fingers to their lips with a hush.

 

“You’re right,” he says, smile weak but still proud. “But you’ve fought with the whole world against you. And gods, if you can survive that, you can survive anything.”

**Author's Note:**

> ...don't self-harm, kiddos.
> 
> I feel vaguely better after writing this.


End file.
